I've just read John Grogan's book Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog, which I highly recommend. Marley was a Labrador retriever, and the book explains the breed name:

No one is certain where Labrador retrievers originated, but this much is known for sure: it was not in Labrador. These muscular, short-haired water dogs first surfaced in the 1600s a few hundred miles to the south of Labrador, in Newfoundland. ...

According to the Labrador Retriever Club, ... the name Labrador retriever came about quite inadvertantly sometime in the 1830s when the apparently geographically challenged third earl of Malmesbury wrote to the sixth duke of Buccleuch to gush about his fine line of sporting retrievers. "We always call mine Labrador dogs," he wrote. From that point forward, the name stuck.

What's a few hundred miles? At least the guy who named them was less geographically challenged than whoever who named turkeys.

And then there's a whole separate breed called Newfoundlands, also black dogs that work near water, and even do water rescue. The St. John's dog, found in Newfoundland, was the forerunner of the Labrador retriever, it says here.

wordmatic

Sunflower howled (like a dog!) when she read Marley and Me!

If you think Labradors are confusing, how about canaries (birds) being named for "The Island of Dogs!?!?!?"

I was trying to find in Google other examples of animals named in error, and in doing so I found this Wikipedia article about some Hebrew names being the names of animals. Some of the examples were Deborah meaning bee, Jonah meaning dove or Caleb meaning dog. A couple of the rarer names though are a bit of an insult: Achbor means mouse and Hulda means weasel or rat.

Can you imagine being named a word meaning weasel?

hehe... on a hunch, when I saw "achbor" means "mouse", I set about discovering whether the Muslim name Akbar might also mean mouse! Yes, it does! It is the name of an old buddy's firstborn (my friend is originally from a Muslim family from India); she had advised me it meant "joy" or some such. According to one source, a reference to the mouse god of Syrian culture.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Hulda means weasel or rat.

Can you imagine being named a word meaning weasel?

Here you go! http://www.lewisriver.com/huldaklagerlilacgardens/

Bee (or Bea ) seems to be a popular girl's name: cf. Melissa and Melinda from Greek, both from PIE *melit- 'honey'. Hulda also seems to be a name in Medieval German, meaning something like grace; (well-)disposed, cf. German Huld 'grace'.

Kläger in German means "prosecutor", "complainant", "litigator", etc. So, presumabably, the original Hulda Klager was a weasel prosecutor. A not uncommon description for lawyers ...

Hopefully Shu won't see this thread.

I wonder if the reputation of lawyers is the same throughout the world.